New York City Plans Bike Sharing Program

The Bloomberg administration
is set to move ahead on Tuesday with plans to create a large-scale
bike-sharing program that would make hundreds or even thousands of
bicycles available for public use throughout New York City — a nimble,
novel form of mass transit that has already become mainstream in cities
like Washington and Paris.

The city plans to release a solicitation for proposals from companies
interested in operating the program, which would allow riders to rent
bicycles from kiosks installed across a swath of the city, according to
two people who have been briefed on the plan.

The program would probably run on a subscription model, according to
the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plan had
not yet been made public.

The introduction of a bike-share program is a long-awaited victory for Janette Sadik-Khan,
the city’s transportation commissioner, who has banned cars from parts
of Broadway in Midtown and installed more than 250 miles of
bicycle-only lanes along major avenues in multiple boroughs.

It would also make New York the latest in a string of American cities that have begun experimenting with communal bikes.

Denver and Minneapolis started similar programs earlier this year, and
Boston received a $3 million federal grant for a bike-sharing network to
begin in the spring. Several public agencies in the San Francisco Bay
Area announced last month that they would collaborate on a $7 million
bike-sharing pilot expected to begin by the end of 2011.

Ms. Sadik-Khan declined to comment on Monday. But last year, in an
interview, she described New York as “an ideal city for cycling” and
said she would consider a bike-share program “tailored to meet our
needs.”

“There’s a lot of interest in it,” she said at the time. “Half of the
trips in New York are under two miles, and we’re essentially flat, so
we’re in a great position to be able to take advantage of that way of
getting around.”

The city first floated the idea
of a bike-sharing program in 2008, but some officials were said to have
expressed reservations about giving over city streets and sidewalks to a
program that would require a sizable footprint.

In Paris, for instance, parking spaces were removed to make way for hundreds of rental kiosks.

Advocates, however, have hailed bike-sharing as a cheap, environmentally
friendly alternative mode of transportation that is perfectly suited to
a dense city where residents often take short trips.

In New York, officials are hopeful that the winning vendor would cover
the costs for the program, according to one of the people who has been
briefed on the proposal. In Paris, a vendor agreed to supply the bikes
and oversee the program in return for exclusive outdoor advertising
rights in the city.

Officials at the Transportation Department declined on Monday to provide
details about how much the program might cost riders.

In Washington, where a bike sharing program began in September, a day
pass costs $5 and an annual membership costs $75. The first half-hour of
use is free with a membership, with small surcharges added for
additional time.

An exhaustive proposal
released by the city in 2009 offered a glimpse of how a bike-sharing
program might look in New York. The study, by the Department of City
Planning, envisioned an initial rollout of about 10,000 bikes that could
be placed at automated kiosks below Central Park in Manhattan and in
areas of Downtown Brooklyn, with a majority of bikes available in dense
business districts.

In Paris, the pioneer of bike-sharing, the bikes are used up to 150,000
times a day. But there has also been widespread theft and vandalism;
bicycles have ended up tossed in the Seine, dangling from lampposts and
shipped off to northern Africa for illegal sale.

Told of the plan late Monday, Paul Steely White, the executive director
of Transportation Alternatives, expressed excitement for the idea.

“Bike sharing has rapidly moved cycling into the mainstream in similar
big cities,” he said. “The Big Apple will take to it like we’ve never
lived without it.”